Which is all very well, but I actually stopped and read the prices being shown: the “before” and “after” figures, and the alleged percentage discounts.
Of the five properties, only two have the figures calculated correctly.
Continue reading “counting the cost”
They say that in Valladolid they speak the purest Spanish. And apparently it’s powerful as well as pure.
From the Castilla y León pages of El Mundo, the headline: “Una pareja de sexagenarios desarma a un atracador en su portal sólo con palabras”.
The story begins:
El poder de la palabra es inmenso, pero no sólo en sentido figurado. Solamente con ese arma, una pareja sexagenaria logró desarmar al atracador que trató de robarles cuando entraban en el portal de su vivienda en […] Valladolid.
One of the things inherent in Spanish culture is the idea of fiestas. Yesterday, December 6th, was el Día de la Constitución, and tomorrow is La Inmaculada Concepción. Both are usually bank holidays, and, depending how they fall, there is often a ‘puente’ linking the two.
I’d expected today to be declared a national holiday to compensate for the fact that the Day of the Constitution fell on a Sunday. No such luck.
It occurs to me that the refusal to link la Constitución with la Inmaculada could be an affirmation of the separation of church and state. And I think we should be having a bank holiday to celebrate that.
In today’s El Mundo there’s a report entitled Los borrosos rostros de la nueva Unión – “the vague faces of the new Union”. (It’s in the print edition, but it seems you need a subscription to read the article online.) In it, they talk about the new president of the European Union and the “superministra”, Catherine Ashton.
There are two possible reasons for that slip, I think: one, going back to the Eighties when I first learned about databases with dBase II, an Ashton-Tate product; and two, the fact that the article is accompanied by a photo of a dalek.
Continue reading “alien affairs”
I really do need that new camera if I am to stop taking pictures like the one on the left. Though what it will take to stop me writing purple prose is anybody’s guess.
I also need it so I can take better pictures than the one below (which comes from the same set as the previous one). After all, if the local area provides me with such wonderful subjects, it would be nice to be able to do them justice.
Not that getting a new camera will make me a better photographer, of course, but it shouldn’t make me any worse.
don't confuse the narrator 